The invention relates to a device for testing the blockage of a tube, or alternately eliminating the blockage within the tube.
One of the major areas of ship repair is the cleaning of condenser tubes which become blocked from seawater growth. After a few months, and sometimes as short as one month, sea growth in the inside of the tubes starts to affect the performance of the main condenser by narrowing the tubes and constricting the flow of water therethrough. This causes the condenser to become less and less efficient in cooling steam coming from the main turbines of the ship.
The most thorough method used to clean out main condenser tubes is a hydro-blast method. This method uses a high pressure gun which directs a stream of water into each tube. After the hydro-blast is completed the tubes are checked one at a time to see which tubes are still clogged. The present method of checking for a clogged tube is to pneumatically force a probe attached to a cable into the tube. If the probe runs the entire length of the tube the tube is considered clear of any blockage. The probe is then pulled back by hand using the attached cable. This process is repeated for each of the many tubes, such as two thousand tubes in a main condenser for a large ship or submarine.
The problems with the present method of checking blockage within a tube are that the probe must be pulled out by hand each time, the cable connected to the probe invariably becomes tangled as it is laid on the deck, and kinks in the cable prevent air from pushing the probe through smoothly. Because of the voluminous number of tubes which must be checked in any main condenser there has been a long existing need for a more efficient way of checking tube blockage.